These Folks Really Watch Commercials

November 08, 1987|By Text by Barbara Mahany.

Cannes it was not. But then there is only so much you can do with a bank lobby smack dab in the middle of the Windy City.

The idea behind Wednesday night`s Chicago premiere of winners from the 34th International Advertising Film Festival, said Terry Laughren, president of Screenvision Cinema Network, was ``to capture a little bit of what happened in Cannes, where for seven glorious days last June the best of the best came to view the competition.``

And although Zarada Gowenlock, mastermind behind the scenes, tried with all her might to transform the lobby of Three First National Plaza into a scene spectacle-what with 30 ornithological helicopters, actually 6-foot ostrich plumes entwined with dendrobium orchids, taking off from dinner tables, and a bevy of Cash Stations disguised under black satin-it simply was not the French Riviera.

``For one thing,`` noted Sean Fitzpatrick, one of the 19 ad whizzes who judged 3,000 entries in a blackened French theater, ``there`s not a lot of bad breath or unseemly body aroma; so it`s not like Cannes. And the ladies all have their tops pulled up.``

Then, stuffing one last bite of pink fish into his mouth, the amply upholstered judge noted:

``People there get passionate about their commercials. People here are passionate about their smoked salmon.``

Indeed, for 10 futile minutes lights flickered on and off as the hosts attempted to wedge the ad world`s wunderkinds away from the raw bar and into the auditorium where snippets were shown of award-winning sales pitches born on story boards in the capitals of capitalism.

``Cut off the bar,`` called out an exasperated host, who in a matter of minutes found himself ushering the troops into their seats.

There, for the next hour, the executives, who paid $200 for this peek, got an eyeful of commercial madness from around the world.

One diplomat noted, ``Obviously, something`s lost in the translation.``

The montage highlighted a sauna full of naked bodies somehow selling a Scandinavian newspaper, a Japanese man a la toilette extolling the virtues of a potion for piles, and a French chicken commercial that took four days to shoot and led the copywriter to conclude: ``The only thing dumber than a chicken is a man who writes commercials about chickens.``

But then, this is the ad biz, in which the universe revolves around 30-second bits and the switch-of-the-channel is the nemesis that drives creativity to new definition.